


Tell Me A Story

by brilliant_or_insane



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Hans Christian Anderson, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Storytelling, a touch of shoddily researched history, good omens - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-30 17:51:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18320270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brilliant_or_insane/pseuds/brilliant_or_insane
Summary: “Tell me a story, angel.”Aziraphale looks down from his book at the demon wrapped around him. “I thought you were asleep.”“Jussst comfortable. Tell me a story.”





	Tell Me A Story

**Author's Note:**

> This fic references a number of Hans Christian Anderson's stories, but you don't have to be familiar with his writing to understand the fic. I highly recommend his stories, however—they are wonderful.
> 
> Many thanks to mirawonderfulstar, who inspired the use of Hans Christian Anderson in general and The Steadfast Tin Soldier in particular with [this post](https://mirawonderfulstar.tumblr.com/post/183044174536/bijoumiliving-mirawonderfulstar-oh-no-were).

“Tell me a story, angel.”

Aziraphale looks down from his book at the demon wrapped around him. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Jussst comfortable. Tell me a story.”

* * *

It wasn’t an unusual request. The first time had been in Egypt, sometime along the 3rd millennium BC—the specifics of the timeline are a bit fuzzy by now—when Crowley had charged Aziraphale to explain how the stacks of papyrus he’d taken to collecting could be worth so much of the time the angel didn’t spend spreading love and piety and so on and so forth. [1] “Tell me a story,” he had demanded, “make me understand how a bunch of words about people doing things can be more interesting than the living, breathing specimens two steps outside that door.” This command was delivered while sitting cross-legged on the floor with his chin perched on his two fists, and accompanied with a mocking smile to clarify that his only purpose was to embarrass the angel and there was definitely positively no genuine interest involved.

Flustered but determined to defend his collection, Aziraphale made an attempt at telling the creation myth of the Ogdoad. He botched it spectacularly. When he wasn’t forgetting essential information or backtracking to fill in details he ought to have given ten minutes before, he was rambling on about the development of a particular hieroglyph or the cultural significance of dying gods. When he concluded the telling an hour later, Crowley blinked at him from the table he was tiptoeing on—he had scarcely stopped moving since Aziraphale began—and dissolved into giggles.

The sight was so endear—erm, jarringly out of form with Crowley’s demonic nature, that the demon had already herded Aziraphale out of the door with the announcement that there was no way life was worth missing for that drivel before the angel remembered to be offended and vehemently protest.

By the time he was encased in a pack of noisy, sweaty _people_ losing their minds over a bunch of wrestlers who frankly weren’t even that good, Aziraphale had no trouble remembering to protest with passion and persistence. He really must stop mistaking the demon’s wiles for friendliness.

But after that day, Crowley kept asking for stories, and after a millennium or two he stopped inventing pretenses for the request. Aziraphale kept telling them, and after a few centuries he became rather good at it. Eventually he began committing the occasional short story to memory verbatim, and when a longer narrative struck him as one that might appeal to Crowley, he would mentally parse the story as he read, identifying core arcs and details and plotting out how he would condense and present the tale.

Aziraphale never offers up a story unprompted. But eventually, Crowley always asks.

“Tell me a story.”

* * *

So no, it is not a new question. Although this is the first time Crowley asks it with all four limbs wrapped around Aziraphale and his face half-buried in the angel’s stomach. The barriers between them have blurred in a disconcertingly undefined manner since the almost-apocalypse.

Aziraphale had been lost in his book and doesn’t particularly feel like finding himself again, but he is enjoying his demonic appendage. He decides it is worth a bit of effort to give Crowley a pleasant experience to encourage its repetition.

“Very well. Would you like a new story, or one I’ve told before?”

“Dunno. I don’t feel like decisions today.”

Setting aside his mild annoyance at being expected to do all the work, Aziraphale considers, mentally cycling through several options before settling on the stories of Hans Christian Anderson. There is something about Mr. Anderson’s work that weaves a spell, that makes you wish to let the words wrap around you entirely. Even Crowley, who never abandoned his habit of movement while listening to Aziraphale’s stories, has a tendency to be quiet and reflective in their wake, which seems well-suited to their current arrangement. What is that story that always made him think about Crowley, somehow? The Steadfast Tin Soldier, that’s it.

Satisfied, Aziraphale takes a sip of his coca, and begins: _There were once five-and-twenty tin soldiers—_

“I know this one,” Crowley cuts in.

“I am aware of that, my dear. You said you didn’t mind a repeat.”

“Yeah, but Aziraphale—”

“Hush,” Aziraphale admonishes, annoyed at having his decision challenged. He begins again, and Crowley holds him a little closer, so it really couldn’t have been a terrible choice.

_There were once five-and-twenty tin soldiers …_

Aziraphale closes his eyes and submerges himself in the telling. Every inflection deliberate, as he speaks each line he anticipates the rhythm of the next, finding the shape of the language and speaking every word so that it hangs in the air only so long and loud as it ought. Anderson had discovered how to weave a spell with words, and Aziraphale interprets his findings, translating pen strokes into areal vibrations.

He speaks of the 25th tin soldier, who recognized a kindred soul not in his fellow soldiers but in the carefully balanced paper ballerina who on the surface seemed so entirely other. He tells of how the soldier was separated from the ballerina by the whims of humanity or the malice of the black bogey, and how the soldier refused to soil the dignity his office by crying for help even when doing so might have saved him. He tells how very near the soldier and the ballerina came to a happy ending before all was ruined by a human's pointless cruelty. And as he releases the final words— _of the pretty dancer nothing was left except her spangle, and it was burned as black as a coal_ —he knows he has spoken well. Smiling with satisfaction, he opens his eyes and allows his attention to return to his body and the demon enclosing it.

His smile fades. Crowley is quiet, which is alright; coming off a story like this Aziraphale would normally take it as a compliment. But he is no longer still. His fingers tap erratically against Aziraphale’s side, and a muscle in his leg twitches.

“Are you alright, dear?” Aziraphale asks, trying not to feel affronted by the demon’s restlessness.

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah, fine. Thanks for the story.”

Aziraphale frowns, but he has nearly resolved to let it pass when Crowley mutters, voice half-smothered in the angel’s stomach, “It’s just—he should have said something.”

“What was that, dear?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley rolls his head back so his voice is no longer muffled. “The tin soldier, he should have said something. Who cares if shouting in uniform isn’t the ‘done thing.’ He can’t help that the humans and the bogey are cruel, but he could have spoken.”

“I don't know,” Aziraphale answers carefully. “I always thought his silence was part of his steadfastness. The courage to face everything, even death, without losing himself.”

Crowley tilts his head further so that his burning golden eyes meet the angel’s. “What’s the point of that? What’s the good of clinging to some idea of who he’s supposed to be when all it does is keep him from the one person he wants to be with?”

Aziraphale feels lost. Crowley’s eyes are blazing with a challenge, but Aziraphale doesn’t understand it.

“Perhaps you are right, my dear boy,” he answers vaguely.

The fire dies, and Crowley drops his head with a sigh. “Nevermind. It’s not as if the ballerina was any use either. The soldier was probably only imagining that she was strong like him.”

Aziraphale is quite sure Crowley has parsed the story incorrectly there, but then he also suspects that Crowley is no longer only talking about the story. He decides the safest option is to change the subject.

“Would you like me to tell you a different story?” he asks. Perhaps if he can just start again, find the right tale, he can still salvage the closeness he had meant to sanctify.

Crowley shrugs, but he settles himself a little more comfortably.

Aziraphale tips his head back, struggling to settle on a new tale when he still doesn’t understand what was wrong with the old one. He reasons that the trouble hadn’t been picking one of Mr. Anderson’s stories; his mistake had been choosing one of the sad ones when he wants his listener to be comfortable and content. That had been rather silly of him—when considering his audience he must keep in mind the emotional bent of the stories, not only their craft and aura. He just needs to pick one of Anderson’s happier tales … Aziraphale runs through the stories he has committed to memory. _The Little Mermaid_ , _The Little Match Girl_ , _The Daisy_ —goodness gracious, are all his stories depressing? Perhaps he ought to have been more concerned about Mr. Anderson’s emotional state back in the day. There are of course a handful of ‘they died a good death and went to heaven’ stories, which he supposes Anderson had intended as positive, but even he can see Crowley is likely to object to those. _Thumbelina_ ends well enough, only it is a little heavy on the romance, and Crowley’s hang-up with the soldier and ballerina’s relationship makes Aziraphale hesitant to reenter that territory. _The Ugly Duckling_ , however, might do well enough—it is a bit simple, but perhaps that is for the best, and it certainly has a happy ending. Surely there can be no substantial objection to it.

Aziraphale waves a hand to reheat his coca, and takes a fortifying gulp.

“Very well,” he says at last, “let’s try this again.”

_It was so glorious out in the country; it was summer; the cornfields were yellow—_

“No,” says Crowley flatly.

“Goodness gracious, Crowley,” Aziraphale purses his lips, exasperated, “you cannot refuse to make a choice and then object to all of mine.”

“M’sorry, angel,” Crowley answers, sounding weary.

Aziraphale pauses. There is an exhaustion in that voice that must have been a long time in the making, and yet ever since the apocalypse didn’t occur they’ve done little but rest. He shakes his head and sighs.

“It’s alright, dear, I just don’t understand. What’s wrong with _The Ugly Duckling_? It’s so tame that even in this day and age they haven’t softened it in the children’s storybooks.”

Crowley shrugs. “I dunno. Guess I’m just not in the mood for Hans’s stories. Too many dead misfits.”

Feeling out of his depth again, Aziraphale tries being reasonable. “But the ugly duckling—I mean the swan—he doesn’t die. He finds his own people. Remember the last line? _‘I never dreamed of so much happiness’_.”

“Yeah, well, good for him. But some of us don’t have ‘people.’ Sometimes the weirdos spend their lives looking for people like them and then and its no use ‘cause they die or the bogeyman gets them or they can’t say the right words. Just flimsy paper ballerinas who hold their arms out for while and are blown into the fire.”

Aziraphale stares at the tangle of limbs draped over him, suddenly realizing what he has been missing. Crowley is doing that—that thing. That thing humans do, projecting himself into the stories, listening to them as if they were about him specifically. Only he cannot see himself in the story of a duckling who found a community like himself. But even if Crowley never found a like-minded community with a reasonable life-span, he has Aziraphale, doesn’t he? Why would Crowley think himself the tin soldier—or no, it was the ballerina he’d compared himself to a moment ago, wasn’t it? _The flimsy ballerina_ , he’d said, which was just nonsense. But then why had the demon been so hung up on the soldier—what was it he said about the soldier? _he should have said something … what’s the good of clinging to some idea of who he’s supposed to be when all it does is keep him from …_

 _Oh_ , Aziraphale thinks. _Oh … shit._

“You’re being very honest,” Aziraphale says.

“I don’t have to be, if you’d rather I wasn’t.” Crowley answers dully.

Aziraphale winces. That wasn’t the response he’d been aiming for. Well, there are a few things he’d been meaning to be honest about himself, ever since he called on heaven to defend humanity and discovered they don’t care twopence more about them then hell does. Now is as good a time as any, he decides.

“I’m going to tell you another story.”

“Angel, I’m not sure—”

“It’s a new one. Well, sort of. At any rate, I haven’t told it before, or read it myself, for that matter.”

Crowley leverages himself half-upright on the angel’s stomach, sharp elbows digging in somewhat.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry. Are you saying you’re going to make up a story?”

“In a manner of speaking. Although I may not abandon Mr. Anderson’s storytelling methods entirely; he has some signature features that are suited for today, I believe.”

Eyes sparking with amused interest, Crowley begins fully untangling himself from Aziraphale. His exhaustion seems lessened for now, for which Aziraphale is grateful, but he is a little dismayed at the removal and unthinkingly places a hand on Crowley’s leg to stay him.

Crowley pauses at the touch and smiles, his slightly dilated pupils lending softness to his eyes. “I’m not leaving, angel,” he says, fully extracting himself and then extending across the sofa and settling his head into Aziraphale’s lap, “but I’ve got to be able to _see_ this.”

Aziraphale purses his lips. He would have preferred for Crowley to maintain his former position—he feels more exposed with those golden eyes in plain view—but in a general sense he does not find this new arrangement entirely objectionable. It will do.

 _Once upon a time_ —

Crowley wrinkles his nose. “Bit cliche, don’t you think?”

“I told you, this story is loosely inspired by Mr. Anderson. He used it all the time. Be quiet.”

_Once upon a time there was a demon in a beautiful garden. He loved the garden, and he loved the land beyond it. He loved the people in the garden, and he wondered why God forbade them knowledge. Demons weren’t supposed to do all that loving, but he did it anyway._

Crowley’s gaze wanders from Aziraphale’s face, his eyes darting about as if he already regrets choosing so exposed a position.

_But the demon had a job to do, and Hell punishes demons who do not obey. He had been told to make some trouble, and so he did—rather more than he had intended._

“Hey, I had it under control!”

Aziraphale raises an eyebrow. “I never said this story was about you.”

Crowley rolls his eyes. “Right, this story is about the other snake that kicked the first humans out of paradise.”

“God did the kicking, not you. And I’ve said nothing at all about snakes or paradise. This is a story; I could be making it making it up. Now listen.”

Crowley snorts, but falls silent.

_There was also an angel in the garden. He was ordered to enforce God’s righteous judgement on the humans and never let them enter the beautiful garden again, because the demon had convinced them to disobey God. The angel did his job, a little, but he also took care of the humans, which had not been part of his orders at all._

_When the demon heard what the angel had done, he thought, “This angel is like me. He loves in ways he isn’t supposed to love, and he knows that orders shouldn’t always be obeyed.”_

_So the demon said to the angel, “I think perhaps you and I are the same.”_

_But the angel didn’t want to be like a demon. He thought being an angel meant he was good without even trying. But if angels and demons could be the same, if demons could be good and angels could be bad, that meant he would have to work to be good, and sometimes he would get it wrong._

_So the angel said, “No, we are not the same.”_

Crowley rolls to his side, staring at the bookshelves on the far wall, and curls his knees inward.

_The demon was disappointed, but he thought, “That’s alright. There are lots of others. Some of them will be like me.”_

_Years passed, and the demon continued to be rather bad at his job._

“Hey!”

“Again, I never said this was about you. Besides, the angel was even worse.”

Crowley’s laugh is a little delighted and a little astonished, and when he twists his head to glance at Aziraphale there is a question in his eyes. But he looks quickly away, and Aziraphale continues.

_In between doing as little harm as he could manage without being punished, the demon kept looking for others like him. But the angels he met assumed he was evil and wouldn’t speak to him, and the demons he spoke to were afraid of his ideas and his love, so they mocked him and hated him._

_The humans were different. They had ideas and they loved things for their own sake, and most of them didn’t divide all people into ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Sometimes the demon would find humans like him, but they died so quickly, and the demon would go for generations without letting himself get too close to any of them, for fear of the loneliness when they were gone._

_And so over the years he kept coming back to the first angel, if only because he would talk to him, which was better than nothing._

“That’s not true,” Crowley murmurs.

“Oh?” Aziraphale takes another sip of his coca for the sake of movement.

“I came back to you because I liked you. Maybe there were others somewhere, other demons or even other angels, but I wanted it to be you.”

“Wanted it to be me who … ?”

“Wanted it to be you who talked to me. Who was like me.” Crowley tenses at his own words. “Not that you _are_ like me, exactly, I mean obviously we’re more alike than we used to think, and of course stopping the apocalypse was disobedience, not that I think you were really going against the Plan, we talked about that—”

“Shhh,” says Aziraphale, gently this time, and runs his fingers through Crowley’s hair. Crowley falls abruptly quiet and draws in a deep breath.

_So the demon kept coming back to the angel, because he liked him. And even though the angel kept telling himself that demons were wrong and different than him, he liked the demon more than he liked any of the other angels._

_But every time the demon tried to say, “I think we are the same,” the angel said, “no, we are different,” and he made the demon feel alone._

_The demon deserved better friends than the angel._

Slowly, Crowley rolls again onto his back. His eyes do not leave the angel’s face again until the story is done. Aziraphale continues to run his fingers gently through Crowley’s hair.

“I don’t think you know this story very well, angel. You keep forgetting parts of it.”

Aziraphale struggles to return Crowley’s open gaze. “Do I? What am I forgetting?”

“Sometimes it was the angel who said, ‘we are the same,’ and the demon who said, ‘we are different.’ Cause the demon was afraid. He was afraid that if anyone found out he wasn’t evil he would be punished, and he was afraid that if the angel really truly knew him, he might not like him after all. The demon thought it would be easier to lose his friend because he was a demon than because he was himself. So when the angel tried to say that he knew what the demon was really like, that he wasn’t all bad, the demon wouldn’t let him.”

“That’s true. And perhaps that scared the angel, sometimes. He liked the demon, and he wanted the demon to like him. And he knew the demon could love, he saw it all the time, but when the demon said he could not love, sometimes the angel was afraid.”

“Yeah, they both hurt each other.”

“But they made each other happy, too.”

“They found a way to become friends without ever quite saying that they were the same.”

“They kept on that way for a very long time. But then Heaven and Hell decided it was time to destroy the earth.”

“This was a problem for them, because one of the ways they were the same was that they loved the earth. They didn’t want it to be destroyed.”

“But the angel still cared more about being a good angel than about being a good person. He would have obeyed Heaven and allowed the apocalypse to happen. It was the demon who went to the angel and said, ‘we have to stop it.’ The demon was the brave one.”

“Kinda, but you’re forgetting part of the story again.”

“Am I?”

“Yep. The demon convinced the angel to help, but when his first plan to stop the end of the world didn’t work, the demon almost gave up. It was the angel who was strong enough to keep trying. And at the end the demon would have run away if the angel hadn’t held his hand.”

“Oh.”

“Not that either of them actually helped save the world. They tried, but the antichrist and humans had it handled.”

“Quite right. But the angel learned something from fighting Heaven with the demon.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. He learned that Heaven doesn’t care about the earth. He learned it doesn’t know a thing about love. He realized that if there was any good in him it was because of the loving he did in spite of Heaven, not because of it. He finally knew that he was more like the demon than he was like Heaven, and that this was good.”

Crowley falls silent for a long moment, eyes wide and staring. At last he says, “The demon learned something from fighting Hell with an angel, too.”

“Yes?”

“He learned that running away from things that scare him isn’t his only option. That’s why, one day when the angel was telling him a story, he thought maybe he’d try being more honest, instead of hiding himself away.”

“Hmm. After the apocalypse the angel also thought perhaps there were things he should say. Things he should apologize for. But he kept putting it off. The demon was the brave the one again. He took the first step.”

“Yeah, but he was ready to run at the first sign of failure. Just like before, the angel was the one that kept them going to the end.”

“They’re good for each other.”

“Yeah, they really are. And they care about each other.”

“More than anything. Or, well, they care very much, I mean.”

“Yep.”

“They like each other.”

“Yes, angel, we’ve established I like spending time with you. And that you like spending time with me. I think?”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

“Um. The end, I suppose.”

Crowley chuckles softly. Thinly disguised confessions hang in the air between them. Aziraphale’s fingers still in Crowley’s hair, and neither looks away from the other.

“Well,” Crowley speaks at last, “it wasn’t quite Hans Anderson, but I liked it. Very much.”

“Anderson didn’t have someone hijinking his narration,” Aziraphale huffs, finally breaking eye contact and feeling unmoored. “It makes for a much choppier telling.”

“Sure, but it also makes for a happier ending.”

“I suppose so, with the right hijinker.” Aziraphale tries, with limited success, to return Crowley’s disconcertingly soft and open smile. The demon looks content, as if all has been said and understood clear as day. Aziraphale drums his fingers restlessly on the armrest. “Look, that was all very touching, but just to be sure we’re on the same page here, what did that story mean?”

“Ummmm, I think it meant ‘heaven sucks and we should hang out more.’”

Aziraphale feels a pang of disappointment. “Is that the whole of it?”

“Pretty much?”

“So. It means that we’re friends. In the proper human way. No more nonsense about how my being an angel and you being a demon makes us different in essence.” Aziraphale tries to tamp down his rising dissatisfaction.

“I mean we’ve been friends for ages—”

“—of course—”

“—but we can stop making excuses for it now. We’re friends.” Crowley seems to relish the word. “Friends.”

“Friends who cuddle?” Aziraphale queries, gesturing towards Crowley’s current position. Perhaps such a concession will content him for now.

Crowley wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know that ‘cuddling’ is the word I’d use—”

“We’re being honest, remember? Not ‘vaguely demonic’ or ‘cool.’”

“Fine. ‘Cuddling’ is nice. If you don’t mind?”

“No. I don’t mind. It’s enjoyable.” It _is_ enjoyable, and Aziraphale reminds himself that he has accomplished everything he intended and more. He’s made his apologies, received some confessions in return, and ensured Crowley will continue snuggling in the future. Only now they’ve gotten this far, it seems a pity not to go all the way. Besides, if the apocalypse wasn’t enough to prompt a full confession, what would be? Aziraphale doesn’t much fancy waiting another 6000 years. Unless of course it goes all wrong and the demon is frightened away, in which case he would be better off staying silent for eternity … Aziraphale watches as Crowley’s eyes loose their focus and his lids drift half-shut, as if all is settled.

“Fuck it,” Aziraphale announces.

Crowley shoots upright and spins around with genuinely impressive speed, and Aziraphale notes Crowley’s fully dilated pupils smugly while trying to ignore the dizzying thud of his own heartbeat.

“What?” is all Crowley manages.

“Oh hush, it’s not the first time I’ve said it,” Aziraphale snaps.

“WHAT?” Crowley’s mouth hangs unabashedly open.

Aziraphale lifts a finger to Crowley’s chin and clicks his mouth shut. “This isn’t the time to get sidetracked on my strategic application of vulgarity. I only said it to get your attention.”

“It worked.”

“Good. So while we’re being honest, I thought I might as well mention that I love you.”

Crowley’s face turns blazing red with a speed Aziraphale distantly observes might not be physically possible for a human.

“Meaning, I’m in love with you, in the human fashion” Aziraphale adds, “just to be clear.”

“Got it,” Crowley chokes out.

“It doesn’t have to change anything,” Aziraphale hurries on. “Being friends is the main thing. Only in honor of happier endings for Anderson’s stories, so many of them are about love that isn’t allowed or can’t be had or isn’t spoken, so since we’ve got the ‘isn’t allowed’ and ‘can’t be had’ parts out of the way, I thought I might as well speak it. Just put it out there. In honor of Mr. Anderson.”

Crowley dips his head, but Aziraphale catches a glimpse of his smile before he is distracted by the demon depositing himself on his lap, which Aziraphale quickly decides is the best arrangement yet. “Just for Hans, eh? How magnanimous of you,” Crowley comments, and the words would have seemed mocking if Crowley’s tone hadn’t been so warm, and if he hadn’t been in the process of tucking his forehead against the angel’s neck. “You always did barrel on to the end once you got moving.”

Aziraphale winds an arm behind Crowley’s back, and the demon relaxes into the support. “Yes, my dear, but how do you feel about it? About me?”

Crowley tips his head up. “Right, sorry, I sort of assumed that if you wanted to know you already would. I haven’t exactly been been subtle.”

“Once I sorted myself out I had my suspicions. But confirmation would be appreciated. I have misunderstood you before.”

“Not today. ‘M in love with you, too. Course I am. Have been for ages.” Crowley fiddles absently with the edge of Aziraphale’s sweater.

“Really?” Aziraphale asks, realizing with surging joy that he has said everything he wants to say, and it’s alright.

“Obviously.”

The angel settles a hand over the fingers fidgeting with his sweater. “If I am understanding you correctly, there is still something troubling you. What is it?”

Crowley turns his hand to interlace his fingers with the angel’s, grasping his hand a little too hard. “I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to say it,” he blurts. “I mean, I didn’t expect you to say that much, I wasn’t even sure you felt that much. But this is risky, I know that, and I shouldn’t have complained about your silence, or made you feel like you should say it for my sake. I never blamed you for not risking it, not really, you don’t owe me that. It was just, after everything I was just so tired of—of—”

“Of being lonely even when we were together?” Aziraphale asks softly.

Crowley bites his lip, hard, and nods stiffly.

“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.” Aziraphale gently strokes his thumb across Crowley’s hand.

“You don’t have to apologize, that’s the whole point of what I just said. And if you’d rather we can pretend it didn’t happen.”

“No,” says Aziraphale firmly. “I don’t want to go back from this. You were quite right. We can’t control the cruelty of heaven or hell or humanity, but we can speak. We can hold one another.”

“Good,” Crowley answers, a faint tremble in his voice. “that’s good.” He snuggles closer, and Aziraphale is glad of the way the softness of his corporation accommodates the demon’s angles.

After a moment, Crowley adds, “So what does this mean, exactly?”

“I think it means we’re friends the proper human way who cuddle and also are in love and kiss. If that interests you.”

“Oh, I’m interested. But shouldn’t we talk more, about the details, and the consequences, and—”

“Later. Kissing first, I think.”

“Okay, but—”

Aziraphale lifts the hand joined with his to kiss it, softly.

Crowley shuts up.

And so an angel and a demon sit in a bookshop in London and do precisely as they wish with one another for the first time in their eternal lives, but in honor of Mr. Anderson we shall leave them to it and not pry into such things. The moral of this story, as he would have it, is not in the particulars so much as it is in the love. It is in the faith that love can reach across impassible boundaries, binding disparate souls in despite of circumstance and opposition and difference. The moral is in the cyclical tragedy of love hidden and denied and condemned across the ages, and in the hope that there will be days when love is enough despite it all.

But while the angel and the demon will gladly concede to Anderson’s moralizing thus far, they respectfully decline his often reiterated promise of heaven as a reward for goodness. The earth, so long as it has the both of them in it, is perfectly sufficient for them.

* * *

[1] Aziraphale was fascinated with human writing from its advent and had been collecting samples from the start, but the unwieldiness of stone and clay tablets had kept this hobby somewhat in check. However, after his move to Egypt—which may or may not have been precipitated in part by his hearing of the advanced writing methods they were developing—the light portability of papyrus resulted in a rapidly increasing collection that absorbed his time and attention to, in Crowley’s estimation, a truly ridiculous extent. [return]


End file.
